Remember this one?????
HE IS GRADUATING FROM KENYATTA UNIVERSITY TOMORROW DEC 14!!!!
MAY GOD BE FOREVER PRAISED!!!
Face of hope...
All the stories recently in the media about KCPE, bursaries, corruption, needy deserving bright Kenyan students reminded me of what happened last week
Last Friday morning I was seating in a colleagues office in Marsabit town just chatting on different things – the kind of peace work they are engaged in, the girls and boys that are involved in the peace soccer tournaments that they organise, the fact that there are numerous human rights issues that happen all the time within Marsabit but cant be spoken about etc etc….what was evident was that growing up in northern Kenya compared to the rest of Kenya are two very different realities that either side simply cannot appreciate unless they consciously make an effort, hence no wonder the policies are so biased when it comes to what is relevant to Northern Kenya…and so on.
Then we got round to speaking about education and she mentioned that the levels of poverty are so high just like many parts of Kenya and the children who manage to at least finish primary school, simply end up lazing about in the village – the girls will probably be married by then and the boys become local ‘soldiers’. And we spoke on the different possibilities of getting support for these children because for instance several members of the soccer team that they sponsor will probably not go ahead to secondary school because of school fees. So far most of the scholarships offered one has to have had 350 points and above out of the possible 500– we ranted over how such scholarships should consider how difficult it is even to get these grades in these parts of the country and you cant have the same marks applied to all.
However, there was one advert from Jomo Kenyatta Foundation (JKF) which she placed outside their office and a Board member from a certain village 20km away told her that there was a young man from her village who has the requisite qualifications and so she asked him to come and see her. He came (on foot) and together they tried to complete the forms and get the requisite documents for the application. She had made copies of the forms they had filled so that he sends the originals by post. And so since I was coming back to Nairobi she asked that I carry the copies to JKF since she was not sure if the boy managed to post them and even if he did it would probably not meet the today (3rd February) deadline.
Imagine when she opened her office door, there he was, with his father, they had come back to her office so that his father can see who is helping his son and also to show her the extra supporting documents that they had managed to gather…so now this means that I was given the originals to safely deliver at the JKF offices on Enterprise road in Nairobi – I mean the look of hope in both their faces was palatable…the numerous thank yous that they were giving us was heart rending – at that point I really wished I was a JKF person so that I could give the assurance that he had the scholarship!!! Despite my colleague saying that all we are doing was ensuring that the form gets delivered, we are in no way associated with JKF and when they get the scholarship is when they should really thank JKF….
I can only imagine what was going through the old mans head, here was a man who had two other children who had equally passed their KCPE despite the odds, had been called to good secondary schools but their hopes of joining secondary schools were dashed since the father could not raise the requisite fees…yes I know this happens all over Kenya as well, but my hearts strings were really pulled as I sat meekly in that office accepting the envelope that was given to me with both hands as if to say, it’s a done deal!
God please help this young man get this scholarship and give him a fighting chance to get his family out of the unending cycle of poverty.
